Clack, clack-clack-clack.

The sound of a keyboard filling a room is a good sound.

Night had come without my noticing.

I finished entering the program while looking out past the window at the town with its lights blinking.

I got up from the chair and looked out through the big glass wall.

It was the top floor, designed as a penthouse.

Two levels, with a high ceiling.

Past the floor-to-ceiling glass, the Jangju River and the town lay open in front of me.

Rain came down in a patter.

The rain was coming down fairly hard.

Late-autumn rain hitting the windows cooled my head down.

♪ Di-di-di-ding, di-ri-ri-ri-ri-ri-ri ♪

Out of the vacuum-tube audio system I’d bought a few days before came a violin, clear and close to the original sound.

It went naturally with the sound of the rain.

Paganini, the man they call the devil’s violinist.

The piece was Caprice No. 24.

Among violinists he was called the man who sold his soul to the devil.

The fantastic, light-footed technique cleared my head.

It resembles my life right now.

I haven’t sold my soul to anybody, but I’m designing a life with some dizzying technique.

“Fantastic…”

It was a good night.

I had moved out of the house for good.

I told them I’d be a third-year soon and it was time to throw myself into studying.

My parents agreed without a word against it.

For studying, the distance meant I would have had to board somewhere anyway.

There was no reason to stop a son who was buying a place and moving out.

That Monday I got two apartments.

I bought one in Mom’s name and one in my own.

I paid for them with the money I had built up in my own and my mother’s stock accounts, drawing it out without effort.

I bought Mom a car too.

She turned down the big Mercedes.

She said there were eyes in the village, and picked a reasonable size.

A Mercedes E-Class, the W211.

And there was something that surprised me.

There was no awkwardness at all in her driving a Mercedes.

I could feel the traces of her having driven something similar in the past.

I was startled by how well she drove.

An ordinary middle-aged woman would be shaking at the wheel of a midsize foreign car, but she was nothing of the sort.

She dominated the car by atmosphere alone.

You could feel the ease of a woman for whom this was nothing much.

Since the car arrived, Mom had been busy.

Once a day Mom stopped by the apartment in her own name, did the laundry and left food cooked.

She absolutely would not come into my place while I was working.

I had given her the door code, but she said it would only get in the way of the work.

An artist’s private space, she insisted, must always be respected.

The apple orchard was small and there wasn’t much work in it.

Father called in hired hands to pick the apples too.

His reason was that it came cheaper than the medicine bills for Mom, who had a weak body.

Mom spent that stretch of time decorating her own apartment.

The color of her face changed.

I had put a generous sum into the account in Mom’s name.

Since it was a transfer from the stock account in Mom’s name, there was nothing to be questioned.

She bought herself antique-style solid wood furniture in her own taste.

And she put an easel in the living room and began to paint.

Mom’s transformation was no crime!

Slowly she was finding her way back to the dream she had given up when she got me and the twins and a husband with no means.

That didn’t mean she threw over the household.

She put out good food, loaded with good ingredients.

Sometimes in the evening or on weekends she and the twins came to the apartment and used it like a country cottage.

My sisters couldn’t get into my place either.

I had built a stronghold of my own.

I furnished it with a king-size bed, a coffee pot, a big refrigerator, high-speed internet and a large glass-and-steel bookcase.

Unlike my mother’s, mine was modern — glass and steel.

Computers alone, there were five.

It was right that I keep my own secrets myself.

Having a place of my own put me in a strange mood.

It was a first in two lifetimes.

When the registration was finished and I held the deed in my hand, a strange feeling came over me.

That is exactly the power that property gives you.

“Money is a more beautiful weapon than anything else.”

Lately I was feeling that more sharply than ever.

Because it was cash, I got another one percent off from the sales company.

My parents were being called sir and ma’am.

Even in the village the way people looked at them changed.

The neighbors spoke to them with more warmth.

My father’s shoulders, which had been pulled in with debt, opened up wide.

School life was a huge success too.

After the pizza incident, the kids treated me as a hero.

Now and then I put out snacks.

Every time, I got the highest praise.

With my life settled, my time went entirely into me.

Every morning I opened the window and trained.

The essence of the mountain behind and the energy of the Jangju River in front of the house were absorbed straight into my body.

The floors were soundproofed well, so I could jump and make no noise.

My body had turned harder.

With the commute cut down, that time became entirely mine.

In any case, my first love, Ye-rin sunbae, texted that she was riding in with her dad because of the entrance exam.

I concentrated and finished the stock investment program.

Today alone my profit broke seven billion won.

Tomorrow around nine billion would come in.

Money brought money in with it.

The bull market kept running.

In a market where dozens of stocks hit the upper limit price every day, I swept it all up.

When I got back from school I finished setting up precisely for the next day’s session.

Being a student, I couldn’t be at the desk during trading hours.

So I invested with a program.

I hadn’t touched futures and options yet.

It wasn’t the time yet.

To take on futures and options, the seed money was an order of magnitude short.

Making fifteen percent a day in the stock market, credit pulled to the limit, was plenty on its own.

“The time is coming soon…”

The timing I’m waiting for is close.

There was time left yet, but before it I needed to lay the groundwork perfectly.

In 2007 the warning signs would show and the subprime mortgage crisis would begin.

And then the steep climb in overseas commodities and the currency futures market in upheaval.

That was what I had my eye on.

“Hey! Jang Tae-san!”

Who is that? Who calls me so kindly?

I was on my way home from work — school, that is.

Maybe because I’d had a working life, the regular school routine felt exactly like clocking in and out.

I liked it, though.

In the past I was unhappy, with no money and nothing going for me.

I was sick of watching my step around the school’s delinquents.

But now every day was a happy day.

Being the one with a perfect score on the midterms had the teachers taking an interest.

Even a private meeting with the board chairman was possible.

My friends gave me their loyalty, if only for the snacks.

There was something lovable about how simple they were.

High school, walked through a second time.

It tasted better than I expected.

And so, at the end of another rewarding day of trading jokes and insults with the guys, somebody called me on the way out of school.

“Who are those guys?”

“They’re Industry High kids…”

“Punks by the look of them.”

My friends walking out with me shrank back.

Our school is a little way out of town.

There’s a mountain behind it and a few apartment blocks around it and nothing else, a clean zone.

There’s almost no occasion to run into kids from other schools.

And yet there were guys calling my name.

One, two, three.

They were from the IT Industry High.

Their faces alone were something else.

They looked like picked men.

“Who might you be? Friends, do you know me?”

The old sages really were clever.

They even made us a line for a day like this.

Naeja bulseon seonja bullae (來者不善善者不來).

He who comes is not good, and he who is good does not come.

Whoever made this saying was probably a man who had pulled a lot of loan-shark money.

Or else a rich man with so much of it that people kept coming to borrow.

“Friends? Crazy bastard.”

“You. Come with us, punk.”

They had all gone insane together.

In broad daylight, in front of somebody else’s school, they were trying to pick me up.

Swaggering, spitting away.

Their behavior really was a sight.

It’s the age when you think spitting like that and putting some force in your eyes makes you something.

It was a sad thing.

“Stop spitting. Before I pull your tongue out.”

It’s been a long time since I took the good-boy mask off.

I gave them the warning with a wide smile.

The look on their faces was a sight in itself.

“Wow! F-ing bastard. Completely lost it, hasn’t he? Do you know who we are, doing this?”

“You little shit, I’ll rip your mouth open!”

In the past I would certainly have shrunk at that line.

But~

“I’m not shrinking, so keep the trash talk reasonable, punks. And if I get the time I’ll rip your mouths open first. Where is it? Stop making noise and lead the way. Do the kids at our school look like pushovers to you?”

Being good at studying doesn’t mean you can’t fight.

When a quarrel started with me, a celebrity of sorts at school, the kids formed a ring around us.

At a rough count there were well over a couple hundred of them.

One wrong move here and you could be trampled to death.

They were all boiling with the blood of their age.

Even now the killing intent was jabbing hard at the Industry High kids.

“…, c-come with us, punk!”

They led the way.

I followed behind them.

“T-Tae-san, wait for us!”

“Let’s wreck those bastards today!”

My friends, who had been moving off with me to go to the PC room, joined in.

Right, so you do have a conscience after all.

The friendship I had raised on pizza and raids on the school store felt solid all over again.

“Hey, though, Tae-san…”

Do-jung, hungry as ever, called me carefully.

“What?”

I looked at my friend fondly.

Do-jung gave me a wide smile.

His sorry build with the belly poking out looked more dependable than usual today.

He looked about to say something fine, like just leave it to me.

Ah… I really do love these friends!

“If we come along with you, today too… you’re buying pizza, right?”

Wh-what did you say?

Whoa. What a sticky, low-grade, processed-cheese-topping friend this bastard is!

(End of Chapter 26)